Behind an impressive start from Chris Diaz and a game-winning single from David Thompson, No. 20 Miami continued its perfect season Friday night, taking the series opener with in-state rival Florida by a final score of 3-2.

Diaz, who entered the opener sporting a 0.75 ERA, delivered another strong start on a chilly night at McKethan Stadium. The Florida City, Fla., native went a career-high seven shutout innings, scattering eight hits while working his way out of tough jams. He battled his way to a career-high 101 pitches, 67 of which went for strikes.

After Florida tied the game at 2-2 in the eighth inning, a clutch two-out single from Thompson led Miami to its tenth straight victory to open the season. With the win, Miami snapped an 11-game losing streak to the Gators, a stretch that dated back to the March 2010 regular season series in Coral Gables. The Hurricanes, one of four undefeated teams in the Atlantic Coast Conference, are now 10-0 for the first time since 1981.

“I thought [Jay] Carmichael was throwing the ball well and whether or not we were going to go to Mags [Johnny Magliozzi] there, but I wanted to see if we could get a lead,” head coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “There wasn’t a point in time where I thought he [Carmichael] was in trouble. I thought we played really good defense tonight. Once again, we need a big hit and we haven’t been able to get one. There are three things that stick out in my mind throughout the course of the game: bases loaded in the first, we had a 2-0 count, we take [the pitch] and we don’t swing when we’ve been dying to get a hit – we don’t cut the barrel loose. Next thing you know, it’s 2-2 and we fly out to right. He’s [Chris Diaz] not going to walk you there; he’s a Friday night starter for a reason.”

Florida continues their downward spiral. After two years of relying on pitching arms and defense, the lack of maintaining an offense to balance the board is coming home to roost. At this point, UF's grace for a potential post season is 3 of the other 6 SEC eastern division teams are at .333 or under. So if the Gators can make sweeps against UGA, UT and Mizzou and manage to get 13 other wins in through the season, they may make a 25 wins season entrance to a regional somewhere.

Wouldn't it be nice to have UF play in a Corvallis Regional?edited by Florida Beaver on 3/2/2013

UNC, GT, NCstate, FSU, Miami, Clemson, and UVA are all top tier teams who will compete against each other every single weekend. Now this year it looks like UNC is the elite team of the bunch followed closely by NCstate, GT, and maybe FSU. Miami, Clemson, and UVA follow right behind.

Its really too early to tell. The bottom of the acc might be average at best.

OpihiMan wrote:

Is there a pretty big separation between the top 3-5 teams and the rest of the conference?

Heels2Omaha wrote:

I think the ACC will be tight at the top. Right now, it's hard not to like my Heels a lot. We look as deep or deeper than I've ever seen us offensively and we returned our entire rotation from a pretty stellar staff last year.